


through the eyes of a child

by odinstark



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst and Feels, Bad Ending, Childhood Trauma, Emotional Baggage, Force Ghost Anakin Skywalker, Gen, Han Solo Lives, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Injury, Jedi Mind Tricks (Star Wars), Mind Manipulation, Not Canon Compliant, Open to Interpretation, Pain, Post-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Repressed Memories, Rey Needs A Hug, Sad, Self-Destruction, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts, That's Not How The Force Works, The Dark Side of the Force, The Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-19 01:15:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22202881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odinstark/pseuds/odinstark
Summary: jedi mind control affects more than just the recipient.
Relationships: Finn & Rey (Star Wars), Leia Organa & Rey, Poe Dameron & Rey, Rey & Han Solo, Rey & Luke Skywalker
Comments: 1
Kudos: 40





	through the eyes of a child

It started, the underlying guilt, with the first Stormtrooper, on the Starkiller base. When she used the force, made them release her, drop their weapon and leave.

She shouldn't have, she didn't hurt them. 

Maybe it was because she knew Finn, knew that maybe not all Stormtroopers were bad. That they were just pawns for the First Order. Innocent, just forced into a bad situation. 

But it doesn't matter, they're probably dead anyway. 

That didn't stop Rey from feeling guilty however.

Didn't help that it felt...wrong to invade their mind, so soon, so raw after Kylo infected her's. It made her sick to her stomach. To be in someone else's head, hear their thoughts, feel their emotions. Know what they love. What terrified them. It felt familiar and it made her feel....powerful.

And that's what scared her.

She vowed, never again. 

Of course that didn't hold up long.

She used it again, on him, when she watched him pull out his lightsaber and saw the light reach out in slow motion. Rey reached out and took control of his motions, made his hand lash out and drop his saber over the drop. The next moments were a blur but somehow, she, Finn, Han and Chewie managed to get off the planet, relatively unharmed.

She shut herself off in a room on the Falcon, away from Han, who was stoically and sadly piloting the ship. She could feel he knew something and she was afraid she knew what it was. And to hide from Finn, ever the motherhen with his newfound autonomy. 

She has a scratch or two, which Finn fussed over until she couldn't stand it anymore, not when she was so tired and her mind was so numb, that she didn't even realise it this time until Finn spoke.

 _"I'm going to put this rag down and leave you alone until we **fuckin'**_ _get back to base."_

She could hear herself in his voice, a dry sort of venom. When the door close behind him, she dropped the floor, crawled into the corner and sobbed, curling up in herself.

It was as easy as breathing at this point. She wished oxygen was in short supply.

Back on base, she exited the Falcon as quickly as she could, she wasn't going to face Han, she couldn't, not after she trapped his son under rubble. Her mind was so addled she couldn't even think about how Han may have accepted that his son was too far gone and needed to be stopped. She couldn't, she **couldn't** face Finn, not when she felt her connection break with him as soon as the ship hit the tarmac. She didn't have the words, there wasn't enough words for her to use to apologise, in _any_ of the languages she knew and she doubted there was enough in all the languages of the galaxies combined.

She found herself on the edge of a blue body of water, which was deep. Pitch black darkness at the centre, so close she could feel it gnawing at her soul, her heart. Her fingers graced the water's surface and watched as fallen leaves floating at the edge scampered away from her hand.

It was silent, somehow, yet so loud. She couldn't hear the noisy base from her resting spot in the grassy woods to the east of the base, she was too far out, her sore soles and tight calf muscles testament to that. But she could hear them, in her mind. 

Through a growing paranoia or through the F....She could hear them either way. 

She gripped the earth at the edge of the pool with a tight grip and dunked her head into the water as deep as her cramped sitting position would let her, and screamed into the clear, blue emptiness, and let the bubbles scamper up her neck as she released all the oxygen from her lungs. 

Hopefully this would kill her.

Even with the water muffling her hearing, and her impending unconsciousness, she would be hard pressed to not hear the crash of a body through the leaves, heavy footstep echoing the clearing. 

She ripped her head out of the water and as the water droplets trickled down her face and into her eyes, stinging them, it felt like they were bleeding, yet it still wasn't the worse pain she had felt that day.

A man exited the bushes, someone she had never seen before, but somehow he knew her. 

He looked both surprised and glad he stumbled upon her. She noticed the resistance logo on his shoulder, embroidered into his jacket. And she took a deep breath, letting the air fill her lungs. 

"You haven't seen me. You will return to base and inform whoever sent you that you couldn't find me."

_"I haven't seen you. I will return to base and I will inform Finn that I couldn't find you."_

Her heart crumbles in her chest as the man turns around, his black curly hair shining in the dimming sunlight, and begins his journey back through the trees. Finn was still looking after her.

"And you will tell Finn, 'I'm sorry'," the words slip from her lips before she can bite them back.

The man pauses at the treeline before continuing deeper into the forest, 

_"I will tell Finn that you're sorry."_

She dived into the blue water when he leaves and only comes up when she can't breathe anymore.

She returns to base at night and full expects to be shot on site, or at the very least, restrained and locked away. Neither of those things happen though. No one is around, at the late hour. When she enters through a, thankfully, unlocked side door in the hanger, she is greeted by a dark and empty room, which is somehow even colder than the night air outside. 

And then the room isn't dark. And then it isn't empty. It stays cold however.

The door should have told her that luck wasn't on her side. 

Leia Organa stood tall in the middle of the hanger, with the dignity of her old nobility. Rey freezes and expects the older woman to pull a blaster from a hidden holster and shoot her dead on the spot, watch her bleed to death with the grace and delicacy of a princess, and the vicious pleasure of a mother.

The woman raises not a gun but a single eyebrow and opens her mouth, Rey expects the worst. 

"Get some rest," the general says, "I need to talk to you in the morning."

Rey blinks and the woman is gone. Her head doesn't shut up and her heart pounds against her chest for the rest of the night, as she wraps her arms around her knees as she begrudgingly falls asleep against the cold rock wall, half under a wing of a ship.

She dreams of sand, heat and pain. 

The next morning, she's offbase again, in the pilot seat of the Falcon again, with Chewie. Han silently gave her permission to take the ship when Leia gave her the mission, looking up only for enough time to nod at the young woman before slumping back into his seat.

She didn't say goodbye to Finn. Rey hopes her understands, but doesn't accept it and let's himself hate her. It's what she deserves after all.

Luke Skywalker was easy to find, when they had the map, and she piloted the ship there the whole time in silence, only gesturing at controls she wanted Chewie to use and didn't speak a single word.

He was strangely compliant with her request, especially when he heard she was sent by his sister herself, and agreed to train her. Rey smiled, just a little, but her chest felt ready to burst.

For the first time since her powers had revealed themselves, she felt like she had control. It helped that they were two of three people on the island and Luke was too strong for her to control by accident. And too strong even if she wanted too.

She hasn't meant to break concentration in her meditation, but something dark crossed her vision in her minds eyes.

When her eyes snapped open, a blue ghostly figure was stood in front of her. Suddenly Luke was gone and it was just her and the ghost on the hillside.

He wore black robes, and had long, slightly curly hair that finished at his jaw. His gaze was strong and his aura was even more powerful. She felt trapped, but neither safe or in danger. Simply unable to move.

Like the man back at the Resistance base, she had never seen him before but this time, she knew who he was. 

Anakin kneeled down on one knee in front of her and pressed two fingers to her forehead that were not warm nor cold, but it was sort of an electric feeling. She could feel it in her bones and it acted as some sort of key because she blinked a second later, Anakin was gone, Luke was back and suddenly visions of hot sand, and pain, and burning sun, empty stomachs, and pain, rusty metal walls, retreating ships, and pain, and she collapsed forwards on her knees and let her side take the brunt of the damage as she hit the ground, and she was vaguely aware of a voice calling out to her, and a gentle hand on her shoulder. 

But the sand was consuming. And it got dark fast.

When she opened her eyes, the sun of Jakku burned her skin, blistering it. Her stomach was hungry from three days lack of food. Her bare arms were covered in burn marks that didn't just come from the sun. Her back was sticky, but not in sweat, and it hurt, badly. Her fingers came back red when she scratched at her sore nose.

The small ship, half buried in the sand, was hot to touch when she opened the hatch to enter. Two adult figures, stumbling, stinking drunks, turned on her when she entered, fang like teeth bared. 

"What did I tell you, girl? Get the _FUCK_ out of here if you don't want something to actually cry about _this time!_ "

"No," Rey heard herself speak but not with the voice that matched her body of the time. Her voice now.

"No? What do you mean, NO-?!" the woman screamed and began matching towards her.

"No," she spoke boldly, and the woman stopped. The man tried to move forward too, but he couldn't,

"You're going to leave me alone. Forever. I want you both to get on a ship and leave Jakku and never come back. And I want you to NEVER hurt anyone again."

The man and woman gain a blank look on their face and gaze at her with an empty look in their eyes and they repeat her words, in haunting tandem,

_"We're going to leave you alone. (Leave you alone). Forever. (Forever). We will get on a ship and leave Jakku and never come back. (Never come back). And we want will never hurt anyone again. (Never hurt anyone again)."_

The dark ship hull turns into a stone archway before her eyes. She punches the man and woman and they turn to dust in front her. She keeps swinging and her hand begins to hurt. The archway becomes red. 

She hears someone call out to her. Her hand really hurts.

"Rey!"

The stone cracks under her bloody knuckles. 

"Rey!"

She breathes heavily as she paints the stone with chunky dark red. 

"You're going to stop punching the wall, you're going to stop. You're going to breathe. And you will open your eyes and face me."

Rey stops, her fist an inch from the wall and her lips move on their own accord, and her body feels heavy and light, warm, fuzzy and her brain senses a foreign presence.

_"I'm going to stop punching the wall, I'm going to stop. I'm going to breathe."_

Rey turns around and opens her eyes and sees nothing and everything, and the ground shattering reality sets in, 

_"And I will open my eyes and face you."_

She collapses in Luke's arms and sobs heavily into his shoulder,

"I knew that's what it felt like. A horrible presence in your soul. I've done that to so many people. I had down it before, I made them leave, it was me, it was me, it was me-"

The man lets her ramble until she cried herself into exhaustion and passes out.

"It wasn't your fault," he whispers as he leaves her alone in her hut, managing to her them both back safely to the village for three in the dark.

She waited all those years in Jakku for a family that left her, a family she had sent away. And she didn't even know it. 

But now she does.


End file.
